This
cartoon dramatizes the ejection of George Q. Cannon, the Utah delegate,
from his seat in Congress because of his practice of polygamy (he had
four wives).

Since being founded by Joseph
Smith in the 1820s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
(informally, the Mormon Church) was one of the most controversial groups in
nineteenth-century America. Central to that concern was the
official Mormon doctrine of blessing and encouraging polygamy (husbands
having more than one wife concurrently). During the antebellum
era, disputes with their neighbors forced the Mormons to flee from New
York to Ohio, then to Missouri, Illinois, and finally the Western
territory they called Deseret (Utah).

During the second half of the
nineteenth century, tensions mounted between the Mormons in Utah and the
federal government. In the winter of 1857-58, President James
Buchanan dispatched federal troops to Utah to ensure that federal law
was enforced. In 1862, Congress passed a law outlawing plural
marriage (having more than one spouse concurrently). To implement
the law in the 1870s, President Ulysses S. Grant ordered federal
marshals to Utah, where they arrested hundreds of Mormons for practicing
polygamy. In 1879, the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the
Congressional statute. Chief Justice Morrison Waite, using the
fateful metaphor "a wall of separation between church and
state," argued that the First Amendment did not protect religious
activities that violated the public interest.

Mormon juries and officials in
the Utah Territory, however, refused to comply with the federal
ruling. In 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes recommended that,
as a last resort, Mormons be disfranchised in Utah. His immediate
successors, Presidents James Garfield and Chester Arthur, also vehemently
condemned polygamy as a morally repugnant crime that undermined the
family unit and the social order. Hundreds of petitions and dozens
of bills were introduced into Congress on the Mormon Question.

The only bill to make it out of committee was drafted by Senator
George Edmunds of Vermont. He had visited Utah and reported his
findings and recommendations in the January 1882 issue of Harper's
Monthly (the sister publication of Harper's Weekly).
The Edmunds Bill extended the 1862 Congressional law, which deemed
plural marriage a felony, by prohibiting polygamists from voting,
serving on juries, or holding public office. It also established a
five-member Utah Commission to be appointed by the president for the
purpose of registering and certifying elections.

Democratic opponents
argued that it was a Republican ploy to gain political control of Utah,
and that it violated due process rights. The Mormon Church
strongly denounced the measure. The Edmunds Bill, however, passed
both houses, and President Arthur signed it into law on March 22,
1882. Nast's cartoon depicts one of the first consequences of
the Edmunds Act: the firing of Cannon, Utah's Congressional
delegate.

Mormons in the Utah Territory continued to resist federal intervention, polygamy flourished, arrests continued (with
few convictions), and Congressmen proposed harsher penalties.
Finally, in 1890, Wilfred Woodruff, president of the Latter-Day Saints,
issued a statement that the Mormon Church no longer condoned the
practice of polygamy. In 1896, Congress admitted the Utah
Territory to statehood.